Does writing promote social cognition? The role of fictionality and social content.

Black, Jessica E.; Barnes, Jennifer L.

doi:10.1037/aca0000438

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Research suggests that other narrative media such as television (Black & Barnes, 2015a) and video games (Bormann & Greitemeyer, 2016), positively impacts social outcomes. And, beyond consuming stories, producing stories in the form of writing—specifically when those stories are focused on people rather than whether those stories are fictional—also positively impacts social outcomes (Black & Barnes, 2021). It is possible that our participants may have been consuming or producing other such narratives during the four weeks in a way that may have influenced performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach, while conflating fictionality with social content, is typical of work in the field. However, we note that it prevents us from making inferences regarding the causal impact of fictionality versus social content, which has been shown to make a difference on social outcomes in other mediums (i.e., writing, as in Black & Barnes, 2021). Fiction and nonfiction readers were asked not to read for pleasure outside of the material provided to them as part of the study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

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The impact of fiction reading on social outcomes: A 4-week randomized controlled study.

Dodell-Feder,

Liu,

Amormino

et al. 2023

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Does reading fiction improve our ability to understand one another? Correlational data suggest that lifetime fiction exposure is positively associated with social outcomes. Experimental data suggest that fiction reading may slightly improve social ability, although this conclusion is tenuous. Here, we test fiction’s impact on social outcomes by conducting a study in which adult participants (N = 210) were randomly assigned to engage in no reading for pleasure, or to read fiction or nonfiction for 45 min/day, 5 days/week, for 4 weeks. At the end of the study, participants were assessed on three classes of social outcomes: theory of mind, empathy, and social functioning. Using structural equation modeling, we tested the impact of fiction reading on latent variables representing the aforementioned social outcomes. Fiction readers did not outperform nonfiction readers or participants who abstained from pleasure reading on any social outcome. Nonfiction readers outperformed those who abstained from pleasure reading on the empathy latent variable. We did not observe associations between lifetime fiction exposure and social outcomes. Taken with the study’s limitations, which include a modest sample size, measurement issues, and the possibility that nonstudy media was consumed/produced during the reading period, these data are consistent with the following possibilities regarding fiction’s positive social impact: Such findings may reflect a priming effect, may occur only after prolonged exposure to fiction, and/or may occur for readers who exhibit a particular kind of engagement with the reading. Together, this study provides no new evidence of a beneficial effect of fiction reading on social outcomes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

The impact of fiction reading on social outcomes: A 4-week randomized controlled study.

Dodell-Feder,

Liu,

Amormino

et al. 2023

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies

Dubourg

Baumard

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Narrative fictions have surely become the single most widespread source of entertainment in the world. In their free time, humans read novels and comics, watch movies and TV series, and play video games: they consume stories that they know to be false. Such behaviors are expanding at lightning speed in modern societies. Yet, the question of the origin of fictions has been an evolutionary puzzle for decades: Are fictions biological adaptations, or the by-products of cognitive mechanisms that evolved for another purpose? The absence of any consensus in cognitive science has made it difficult to explain how narrative fictions evolve culturally. We argue that current conflicting hypotheses are partly wrong, and partly right: narrative fictions are by-products of the human mind, because they obviously co-opt some pre-existing cognitive preferences and mechanisms, such as our interest for social information, and our abilities to do mindreading and to imagine counterfactuals. But humans reap some fitness benefits from producing and consuming such appealing cultural items, making fictions adaptive. To reconcile these two views, we put forward the hypothesis that narrative fictions are best seen as entertainment technologies that is, as items crafted by some people for the proximate goal to grab the attention of other people, and with the ultimate goal to fulfill other evolutionary-relevant functions that become easier once other people’s attention is caught. This hypothesis explains why fictions are filled with exaggerated and entertaining stimuli, why they fit so well the changing preferences of the audience they target, and why producers constantly make their fictions more attractive as time goes by, in a cumulative manner.

show abstract

Does writing promote social cognition? The role of fictionality and social content.

Cited by 2 publications

References 64 publications

The impact of fiction reading on social outcomes: A 4-week randomized controlled study.

The impact of fiction reading on social outcomes: A 4-week randomized controlled study.

Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies

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